Gabrielle Gurley

Recent Articles

The president stokes race-baiting and potentially worse in service of his re-election campaign. Democrats must continue to call out these distractions and his epic failure to address the real concerns of average Americans.

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019, the United States House of Representatives voted along party lines to condemn President Donald Trump for his racist tweets that urged four members of Congress—Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—to go back to where they came from. This historic vote is a turning point (there have been only four similar congressional votes outside of impeachment) but one that, for the moment, offers little vindication for Democrats. The United States has entered a dangerous new period of instability conjured up by the president and his far-right wing enablers. The pernicious narratives that Trump constructs when a black, brown, or beige person is so bold as to exercise his or her First Amendment rights provides the fuel for campaign rallies like the one Trump held in Greenville, North Carolina, the day after the vote. The problem with all the “...

President Trump unleashed so many distortions during Monday’s so-called “environmental leadership” remarks that the White House propaganda machine makes Orwell’s Ministry of Truth look like the Library of Congress. Trump proclaimed that the United States is number one in “access to clean water.” (It’s tied for the top spot with 9 other countries.). He said that the administration is a good steward of public lands. (It has reduced the size of two Utah national moments and continues to threaten the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with oil drilling). He claimed the Paris Climate Accord is “unfair, ineffective, and very, very expensive” (Trump has mischaracterized the agreement on numerous occasions). It was, as Rebecca Leber of Mother Jones described it , “a rare and strange speech.” Climate change has no place in the president’s lexicon, so those words never passed his lips in remarks about the environment. But the...

After recent subway derailments, Wu has taken up the banner that state political leaders have dropped, sounding the alarm that Massachusetts officials must develop comprehensive solutions to the beleaguered transit system before it’s too late.

screen_shot_2017-07-19_at_4.28.52_pm.png N ew York City responded to its “summer of hell” with congestion pricing that will steer hundreds of millions of dollars to the city’s subways. Washington’s Metro launched a mammoth capital repair program after a spate of electrical fires, and its member jurisdictions, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, ceased endless dithering to agree on new annual funding contributions . These crises forced municipal and state leaders to swap out the toxic incrementalism that passed for action with real strategies to solve mobility crises that affect millions of people, riders and drivers alike. And then there’s Boston. The Homeric ineptitude of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the country’s fifth-largest transit system, is the stuff of legend. Financial crises and service-shuttering snowstorms have led to important management reforms. But abysmal service, especially the daily delays and...

As she travels around Maine gauging her re-election prospects, Susan Collins is bound to face some very angry women still seething about her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime Supreme Court appointment. The Kavanaugh hearings lit a fire under many of her constituents, one that has been smoldering at least since 2016. It’s now jumped her last political firebreak, her reputation as a reasonable Republican. With the repercussions of Donald Trump’s victory made plain by that single vote, the unprecedented outpouring of political engagement in Maine in 2018 produced a Democratic trifecta and put Collins’s seat in play. With the path to a possible Democratic Senate majority winding through Maine, candidates who have been biding their time are jumping into what promises to be a volatile race to knock off Collins. This stands in contrast to other Senate races, where Democrats have failed to secure top-tier opponents and lost some possible challengers to the...

Democrats are ascendant in the Pine Tree State. Attorney General Janet Mills became Maine’s first woman governor, and the party took control of the state Senate and increased its House majority. As Mainers breathe easier and state officials begin to clean up the mess left behind by former governor Paul LePage and his cabal, can Maine provide a beacon for the rest of America?

This article is a preview of the Summer 2019 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . Liesha Petrovich kept tropical-fish antibiotics on hand just in case. You could get them online and they were much cheaper than the prescription medicines her family might need but couldn’t afford. Two years ago, she stumbled walking and broke her foot. A black-belt karate teacher who co-owns a dojo with her husband in the western Maine town of Norway, Petrovich had broken her foot once before and she decided to power through: Her daughter turned 18 shortly before the injury, leaving her and her husband without the Medicaid coverage that the family had relied on since the older of her two children was born. So instead of racking up thousands of dollars in emergency room bills, she ordered a walking cast from Amazon. But her worries multiplied as the kids neared age 21, the cutoff for their own Medicaid coverage. Her daughter was addicted to opioids, had ended up in rehab, and...